Category Archives: Review

Mickey and Minnie Mouse star in the all-new Croissant de Triomphe (2013)

Cartoon Brew is reporting that, starting on June 28th, Disney will begin airing 19 new, modern-looking ultra-short shorts on Disney Channel and Disney.com. Today we get a look at the first of them HERE.

Ever since first reading about the small but interesting menu at the Hungry Bear, it has held the honor of one of the few quick service restaurants that I legitimately had to sample. There are many reasons why I prefer to sit down and be served at a table service — I will delve into my distaste for quick service joints as we go along — so for a counter service restaurant to so capture my attention is definitely an accomplishment of certain distinction, even if it is a somewhat useless distinction. Continue reading →

If you’re celebrating a special occasion in Disneyland, the Napa Rose restaurant at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel is the best place to do it. For my birthday, Danny and I had the opportunity to dine at the restaurant’s Chef’s Counter. To make a reservation for this seating, one must call the restaurant directly. Napa Rose takes reservations up to three months in advance. There are two seating times for the Chef’s Counter each night: 5:30 PM or 8:30 PM. This should give you an idea of the kind of leisurely meal you can expect when you dine at Napa Rose. We chose the later seating when we made our reservation.

We got to the restaurant a little early and decided to have a drink in the lounge (Woodford neat for Danny, pomegranate martini for me). At 8:30 exactly, a hostess came to our table in the lounge and told us that the earlier seating was running a bit long, apologized for any inconvenience, but said that our table would be ready shortly. We weren’t inconvenienced at all, but we were impressed with the restaurant’s impeccable attention to timing and their guests’ schedules. It’s a far cry from many Disney restaurants, where daily waits of 20 minutes or more are to be expected and are seldom acknowledged by the staff, let alone apologized for. It was only a few minutes later that the same hostess came back to escort us to our seats.

The original working title of Pixar’s Brave, which hit theaters this weekend, was The Bear and the Bow. Losing that strong and memorable title for a buzz word is only the first hiccup and portends trouble to come in a pre-production schedule that was plagued by delays and disappointments. The most glaring and possibly damning of which was the outright firing of the screenwriter and first-for-Pixar woman director, Brenda Chapman.

It was only a teaser, so here is my short impression of the Monsters University: Ever since the original film dropped, I’ve been looking forward to a possible sequel. It is set up for a great sequel better than any Pixar film has been since the company’s inception, with the exception of maybe The Incredibles.

So, what we have here is a prequel, which is already disappointing. It is a cute idea to set them in their college years, and I am certain that Pixar will eventually release a quality product, but I’m still disappointed in the direction they decided to take with this film.

The Jolly Holiday Bakery Café is Disneyland’s newest quick-service dining establishment. It opened in January of this year when the Carnation Café and Blue Ribbon Bakery closed for refurbishment. Chef Oscar Martinez, the famed head chef of Carnation Café and the record-holder for the longest tenure as a Disneyland employee (55 years and counting!), is responsible for Jolly Holday’s delicious menu.

Now that we live in Montana, our opportunities to enjoy some Disney magic in our hometown are few and far between. We can no longer go to the World of Disney in Manhattan on a whim, nor do we have great revival theaters that play the classics from time to time. Pixar Studios re-released a lot of its movies to AMC theaters on Memorial Day weekend, but the nearest AMC to us is probably hundreds of miles away. The one tiny mall in our city doesn’t even have a Disney store.

Often when we need a Disney fix, we just pop in a DVD or listen to park music at UAB Magic. We also subscribe to several blogs and post frequently on various Disney-dedicated message boards. But when I saw that Disney on Ice would be coming to our city about a month after we moved here, I suggested we go (read: I begged Danny to take me). I had been to Disney on Ice a couple times as a little girl with my family. Danny had never been and thus, didn’t know what to expect. This was probably lucky for me, as I’m sure I’ll never get him to make the same mistake again. He’s not a fan of ice skating, has no particular affinity for costumed Disney characters, and doesn’t enjoy live Disney shows with low production value (“Voyage of the Little Mermaid” at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I’m talking about you).